


14.10: House Special

by nochickflickpodcast



Series: NCFM Season 14 [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: (No) Chick Flick Moments, Character Analysis, Comedy, Discussion, Episode Analysis, Episode: s14e10 Nihilism, Fancast, Gen, Humor, Meta, Podcast, Screenplay/Script Format, transcript
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21578758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nochickflickpodcast/pseuds/nochickflickpodcast
Summary: Join us in covering S14E10, "Nihilism", or the one where the boys MacGruber themselves an archangel capture, Dean grabs a drink and waits for the rain, and Maggie practices her Braveheart speech. Tune in for Michael smugness galore (though we love him for it.)
Series: NCFM Season 14 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1379836





	14.10: House Special

**Author's Note:**

> Complete transcript of (No) Chick Flick Moment's 14.10: House Special
> 
> Listen in full [here](https://www.nochickflickpodcast.com/episodes/episode/73524659/1410-house-special), or wherever you get your podcasts!
> 
> Website ([x](https://www.nochickflickpodcast.com/)) Twitter ([x](https://twitter.com/nochickflickpod)) Tumblr ([x](https://nochickflickpodcast.tumblr.com/))

Remmy: Hello, everybody! This is (No) Chick Flick Moments. We are coming off of our one-week hiatus. Oh, by the way, I'm Remmy. 

Bea: And I'm Bea. 

Remmy: Hi, Bea.

Bea: Hi! It's been so long. 

Remmy: [laughs] It's been 25 years! No, it's been like two weeks since we've recorded but for some reason I'm like...

Bea: We've gotten rust on our joints. We're like, what's going on?

Remmy: [laughs] And then I just had to go through like 25 minutes of audio f***ery, but beyond that. 

Bea: [laughs] No big deal. 

Remmy: Yeah, NBD. As I said, this is (No) Chick Flick Moments. Welcome back, everybody. This week, we are following up on last episode's mid-season finale —

Bea: And the cliffhanger that they left us with.

Remmy: The Thanos snap. We are talking about season 14, episode 10, "Nihilism" today. It was an episode written by Steve Yockey and directed by Amanda Tapping. As I was writing down Amanda Tapping, I was like, I know that name. Do I know that name? I think I know that name.

Bea: Yeah. I'm hearing it now and I'm just like, is that Naomi?

Remmy: It is! It is. Google told me that this episode was directed by Naomi's actor/actress, which is pretty cool. I didn't know that she directed.

Bea: That is so cool. 

Remmy: Yeah, and the description for this episode reads: Michael has retaken control of Dean as his army of monsters continues to move in on our heroes. Sam devises a plan to try and reach Dean and stop Michael before anyone else has to die. I think — I feel like this episode is going to be a doozy.

Bea: Yeah. I remember coming off the hiatus not knowing what to expect and then having this episode be fast-paced, really crunching you through a lot of things, and wringing you out emotionally along the way.

Remmy: We talked about this episode. This is one of those episodes that just invited a lot of speculation, right? 

Bea: Mhmm.

Remmy: We're answering some of our questions from coming off of a month of speculation with the hiatus and this episode itself, it was like — we had so much to talk about, and I hope that we can tap into even a fraction of it here. [laughs] 

Bea: Oh, yeah. We might do it a bit more coherently this time because the last time was just, "Oh my God!" 

Remmy: I don't know! I mean, I remember as I was watching — as I was rewatching — there were scenes, there were moments, and I was like, oh my God, we talked about this for 15 minutes. And then, of course, I was like, but what we what were we talking about? [laughs] 

Bea: Yeah. Yeah. I'm sitting here. I'm like, I know there was a conversation. Like, touching the ground, "I have no memory of this place."

Remmy: [laughs] Exactly! Exactly. Okay, so kicking off. 

Bea: Opening scene. 

Remmy: Yeah, opening scene. Kicking off this episode, we have one of those moments where, I remember, we just talked about it. We talked it to death the first time, but we open with Rocky's Bar.

Bea: Yes. Starting in on Rocky's Bar, we are focusing in on a bunch of different elements here that are, I would say, a little kitschy or eccentric. There is a squirrel hugging a beer bottle. There are some slot machines. There's a pool table. There's a lot of eclectic decor, and there's a storm going on outside. The door to the front of this bar opens and in comes Pamela Barnes.

Remmy: Pamela Barnes. Oh my god. Oh, and as we're going through these Rocky scenes, you totally need to be my eyes and call me out some of our easter eggs in this setting, because we talked about how it's all eclectic and cluttered and such. I'm not going to give you my 20 seconds of feels on Dean and this being his comfort space, and Dean never being able to carry things [with him].

Bea: We're gonna be — it's gonna be 20 minutes, okay? Let's be real. [laughs] It's not going to be 20 seconds.

Remmy: Dean’s never been able to carry anything with him in his vagabond life, and for him to finally have a place that he can call his own and collect things around him? Okay, I'm fine.

Bea: It's just peacocking these elements of what you would see as roadside attractions, that when you were [a] kid and these are the things that stand out when [he's] going from one motel to another to another. Same road, different face every time.

Remmy: Oh my God.

Bea: And so he's just picked out all of these grotesqueries, or just elements that speak of something unique and having history to them. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. [laughs] But Pamela.

Bea: But we're not talking about that guy. [laughs] Oh, we're f***ed.

Remmy: Okay. Oh, no, we're fine. This episode's gonna be great, guys. You don't need to buckle in.

Bea: Yeah, we're not going to be emotionally ravaged by the end of it at all. [laughs] 

Remmy: [laughs] That doesn't sound like us. 

Bea: No. 

Remmy: No.

Bea: Yeah. Pamela comes in from this storm outside, and she's talking about the end of days that she battled at the grocery store trying to buy the last bag of limes for the house special. We don't know who she's talking to at first, but when she sets the bag down and the hand comes and grabs it off the bar, then we see that it's Dean.

Remmy: Yeah. Oh my God, Pamela. She's so gorgeous. I can't. I can't function.

Bea: She hasn't changed a bit.

Remmy: [sighs] Pamela. I yelled when I saw her. I was freaking out. I should have watched this episode like five times because the first watch, I was just spiraling from the beginning. It took me 10 minutes just to catch up with myself because oh my God, I can't believe all this is happening right here, right now.

Bea: Oh, I know. You got these psychic punches of seeing Pamela on-screen and what the bar means and all of this, and you're reeling. You're trying to catch up.

Remmy: Augh. Yeah. So Dean says, "Yeah, I'm not going to make the house special without limes. What you — we're not heathens." He makes said house special, he — which I'm like, is just a tequila shot? [laughs] He slaps — 

Bea: And a beer.

Remmy: And a beer. Yeah, Dean. All right. All right.

Bea: Simple man, with simple joys. 

Remmy: Yes. Exactly. 

Bea: Yeah, and we were talking about little details, like the bar that we see here. There is this heart carved into the wood and it has "Daphne loves Fred" inside of it. And the beers that are on tap. There is the IPA "Cosmic Cowboy" and "Red Fox", and we see this one that has the FB Beer Co. on it. I'm like, mhmm. There's a bunch of love being spread into the props and the setting. Whoever was in charge of the set design was like, "We're throwing [in] everything!"

Remmy: Yeah, which makes sense because as we're going through this scene, we keep getting dropped these little devastating but throwaway lines, where it's revealing that Dean is living out this story, this dream. "This is the dream," he says, more than once this episode. He is the proprietor and owner of this bar. Cas and Sam are out hunting. [Dean's] in the life, but out of it. This place is his own and he is so proud of it, and I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. So, let's go through the scene. 

Bea: Yes, so after they've done their house special shot, this businesswoman enters from the storm and she has a briefcase with her. She's talking about trying to get Dean to sign some paperwork, and Dean is saying that he's not going to sell this place. No matter how generous the offer is that she's bringing. It's that one devastating line that you're mentioning there, like, "I've never had anything this nice."

Remmy: Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. 

Bea: F*** me. Yeah.

Remmy: And, "Thanks for stopping by but not interested."

Bea: Yeah. And he's trying to be nice, like “Oh, stay. Have a beer.” She's just trying to cut to the chase and he's luxuriating in the fact that he is gonna say no, so he has all the time in the world to just irritate her out the door.

Remmy: [laughs] 

Bea: And I noticed — okay, were you paying attention to Pam's outfit here? She's got this Back from Hell t-shirt. She's got a little pair of wings on her necklace. They have her going with this, I guess, afterlife vibe for her character. These elements that are doing a callback to where she actually is in reality.

Remmy: Yeah, actually, it wasn't just the way that she was dressed. I'm not recalling specifics, but some of the things that — some of her dialogue, some of her word choices, I think, also called back to her reality versus the dream. But I did notice both the shirt and the wings necklace. Like I said, some of the things that she said it pinged to me as, "Oh, no." [laughs] 

Bea: Yeah. There's a layer to this. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, but of course Dean is not picking up on that.

Bea: No, and after this businesswoman storms out, we go to them in the back room. Dean is doing some paperwork and Pamela has come in with more shots. She's saying that she has a hot date tonight and Dean goes, "Well, how come you always have a boyfriend?" and Pamela retorts, "How come you always want what you can't have? Besides, you don't want me. You just like to flirt."

Remmy: But Dean, when that line — okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, it's fine. I'm fine.

Bea: Alright, alright. Alright. Alright.

Remmy: [laughs] Alright, so when Pamela said, "How come you only want what you can't have?" You know, I'm easy. I'm so f****** easy, but I just — I probably had to pause, I was so, whoa, did that just happen?

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: Did she just — did he just — did that? What? No? What? Hey. [tsks] Guys, hello??

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: Yeah. That was me. And Dean, he's like, whoa, he says whoa, okay, but his face in this moment. He wasn't offended. He wasn't taken aback. It was more like a — 

Bea: It was like a touché. 

Remmy: It was. It was a little bit of the touché and also like, "Oh my God, did you just go there?" But yeah, she just f****** with there and then she follows up with, "Besides, you don't want me," and I'm not going to get into the under layers of he doesn't actually want her. He just flirts for fun. And so for her to say, "Why do you only want what you can't have?" she's not talking about herself, really. On the surface, she's talking about herself, but underneath I don't think she is at all, and I think that Dean knows that. But it is not my destiel podcast so...

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: I don't have one, but. [laughs] 

Bea: Well, you're talking about these lines and elements to Pamela that are speaking to the fact that this isn't the Pamela that we know. To me, this little rapport that they have here, that was something that pinged for me, because when we were first introduced a Pamela in season 4 episode 1 "Lazarus Rising", she was flirty to Dean and Sam. I wouldn't say that she was [flirting] with any intention of following through on it —

Remmy: No.

Bea: — but she was definitely like, "Oh, I'm gonna be flirting with you to see if I can make you uncomfortable." But in this Rocky's Bar reality, what we have is sort of the opposite. She's saying, “Oh, I'm doing my own thing, and if anyone's making just pointless advances then it's you, Dean. You're the one who does this, and it's just because nothing's going to come from it.”

Remmy: Yeah, exactly. He does it because he knows — because it's safe. 

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Because there's not going to be a follow-up that he has to, you know. Yeah. 

Bea: Yeah, and I think that there's an element, too, of just allowing the audience to know that Pamela isn't here as the romantic interest. Dean isn't here with this fantasy of a wife; he's an entrepreneur. It's just genuinely [that] he has a place that is his own and it is populated by friends. It's populated by people he's close to. Pamela and him have a lot of overlap in their personalities, and so for her to be the choice in this bar, I really found that engaging.

Remmy: Absolutely, and that's a good point. Yes. I do appreciate that were putting forward that this isn't — this is not a romance. It's not romantic. Okay, sorry — 

Bea: Yeah, Pamela's not the one that got away.

Remmy: Yeah. Pamela's not the one that got away. I remember, when coming off of this episode, I was thinking it was such a surprise — and such a pleasant surprise — to see Pam again, but then it was also the perfect choice and almost the only choice. I'm like, who would I have rather have seen walk through that door? Charlie? No. Kevin? No. Um — Benny. Never mind. [laughs] 

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: Okay. No. Okay, "rather" is too strong a term, but I would have died if it was Benny, okay.

Bea: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. 

Remmy: But anyways, I think — we all know how I feel about Dean and his friends and his relationships, and the people that he feel safe with and content with and — blah blah blah. The people that he can open up to and just be him[self], truly 100% himself with.

Bea: Yes. 

Remmy: It just kills me every single time we get scenes like this and we see Dean's contentment, and it's supposed to. He says to Pam, "This is the dream. This is everything I've ever wanted," and it's [sighs] I'm — I'm dying and dead and bye. [laughs] Take me home. Take me away from here.

Bea: I'm definitely going to touch base on this a little bit later. But yeah, woof.

Remmy: Yeah, woof.

Bea: It's so good! I can't believe that this is the first scene, and we're not even done the first thing because Dean — we cut from the back room. Now he is going into the walk-in cooler and he's grabbing another case of Texan Star. When he steps out, Pamela is like a watchdog staring at the door. So I'm like, did she sense what was coming? But — 

Remmy: Yeah, she did.

Bea: Basically, yes. So yeah, there — a vamp comes in and he said that he was from Sutler, and he has a bone to pick with Dean. There's been a drunk guy at the bar this whole time who finally rears up and attacks, and Dean jumps behind the bar. He tosses Pamela a shotgun, he grabs a machete, and then they kill both vampires in quick succession. 

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And they wrap it up by wiping up the blood. [laughs] 

Remmy: [laughs] Taking another shot, or pouring a beer. There they gleefully finish up this fight. They're riding the adrenaline high. They're just having a good old time, and Pam says, every other — "Seems like every other week there's some big bad that it comes out to get you." That's the — she doesn't say this but it's like, when you're stationary, when you have a name for yourself, then you're going to get that kind of trouble. Also, it was very old western, like him bursting through the doors. Very saloon-like, "I got a bone to pick with you," which is exactly Dean's scene. This whole — this whole sequence is really just like...

Bea: It's just the perfect fantasy for Dean.

Remmy: Right? Exactly. 

Bea: Yeah, because he has a stationary place he's calling home. He has monsters dropping by on the regular that he can fight, but he's defending a territory rather than going out and seeking these things. He wraps up this like, "What can I say? I'm famous," and just this little kid grin. I'm like, oh my God, I've never Dean smile like this before. It's been so long.

Remmy: That was a smile. Uh-huh. We get that little grin and then we get the title card, because that was only the opening f****** scene!

Bea: Yes!

Remmy: And this is my life now.

Bea: You are basically — you get your legs kicked out of you at the very start of the episode, and then you're just trying to stand up because everything is moving so quick. Right after this title card — 

Remmy: Talking about moving quick. Yeah. [laughs] 

Bea: We have a return to Kansas City, and we now see Dean as Michael. Michael's all gussied up and doing — 

Remmy: I'm! [laughs] 

Bea: Augh. Doing his little villain monologue a little bit longer. 

Remmy: We open back to Michael and he's got his whole getup on. He doesn't have the cap, but he's got the three-piece suit and the pocket watch and the tie.

Bea: Yeah, and the tie pins that he has to his collar.

Remmy: Oh my God. And I'm like, did he mojo himself into my fancy outfit? [laughs] 

Bea: His f****** version of the Thanos snap is like: Dress. [snaps]

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. So with the Thanos snap, I can only assume he popped himself into his preferred dress. I'm like, okay.

Bea: Yeah, he's like, "Like f*** I'm wearing plaid."

Remmy: [laughs] Perfect. Perfect.

Bea: [laughs] And yeah, he's monologuing at this point. He's going, "Hope is an amazing thing. You had no chance, none, but you had hope," and that is the reason why they came to fight him. He's just constantly being smarmy and he's using his powers to crush them downwards, but Cas manages to get up and distract Michael long enough for Sam to throw this angel molotov on to Michael. He goes up in flames for a little bit, just long enough for Cas to throw on the angel cuffs.

Remmy: Yeah. I'm like, Cas, be careful. You're not supposed to touch the fire. Cas!

Bea: He's reckless at this point. He's like, you know what? F*** it.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, and like you said, Michael was just so smug. He's like, "You brought me my favorite vessel. You brought me the one weapon that could possibly hurt me. I'm so glad you're here to witness my —" whatever. His drama.

Bea: His quote-unquote ascent.

Remmy: Yeah, uh-huh. There it is. 

Bea: And he could crush them. He could absolutely kill them. But instead he just chooses to force field them downwards and then speak at them for ages. He wants an audience. 

Remmy: Oh absolutely, and he gets it, but he lets them get the better of him. Now he is caught in these angel cuffs — the cuffs that we mentioned Bobby had been working on trying to improve to hold an archangel. So the second that Cas gets those cuffs on Michael, both Cas and Sam warily back up a little bit. They're like, is this gonna work? Is it going to work? [laughs] 

Bea: Yeah, yeah. We either are going to earn half a second of life or we have a lot more. Let's just see how this next half-second goes.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. They've got their dental floss and bubble gum and it paid off this time. 

Bea: They're MacGruber.

Remmy: MacGruber? MacGyver.

Bea: [sings] MacGruber. 

Remmy: Isn't it — what?

Bea: From SNL. 

Remmy: Oh, I don't watch SNL.

Bea: It's fine. It's at least 10 years old.

Remmy: [laughs] Okay. I was, Bea, do you have like a Canadian MacGyver I don't know about?

Bea: [laughs] It could be. I'm not sure if Will Forte's Canadian or not.

Remmy: Is that — is that what's happening here? [laughs] Um, yeah, so next? [laughs] 

Bea: Yes. The cuffs are on Michael and they try breaking through to Dean, speaking to him, but Michael is just sassing back. Sirens begin sounding outside downstairs, and around this time Sam gets a phone call from Maggie, who is trying to track down what's going on in the city, but there's just so many monsters. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, it's chaos out there.

Bea: But no kills. 

Remmy: No kills, yeah, just bites and scratches. It's almost like — and Maggie trails away, but we know and Sam knows, on the phone. They're not trying to destroy the city. They're trying to infect the city. 

Bea: Exactly.

Remmy: And Maggie says, okay, we're coming to you, and Sam says no, be my boots on the ground. Just do your best to contain and control. 

Bea: Yeah. Work on saving people. Don't worry about us.

Remmy: Right. He says, "We're here. We have Michael. we'll figure it out," and he hangs up and [laughs] Cas is like, "Okay, what's the plan?" Like, uhhh... [laughs] 

Bea: "I was just kidding!" [laughs] 

Remmy: Yeah, yeah.

Bea: They get this really roughshod idea that like, okay, we'll just get Michael downstairs. We'll get him into the trunk of the Impala, and we'll get back to the bunker. And Jack: "Garth's in the trunk." Sam: "It's a big trunk."

Remmy: There's so many great facial expressions this episode.

Bea: Yeah, like them thinking on their feet and then having these hilarious little beats that come with it. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. "It's a big trunk. It'll be fine."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Except Michael, being the smug a**hole he is, they hear these disturbances outside the room and they all look as one to Michael, and Michael says, "Ah, the cavalry has arrived." He has called his monsters to help free him from this predicament. So it's not going to be as simple as just herding Michael downstairs and throwing him in the trunk anymore.

Bea: Exactly. "It's a party now." 

Remmy: Yes. Oh my God, every line from Michael — and I don't have most of them written down, but — every line from Michael is so f****** smarmy. 

Bea: Yeah, it's dripping with sarcasm, or this schadenfreude glee at what they are going through, because all he has to do is bide enough time to get out of these cuffs. He's like, "Oh, well, I guess this is what I'm doing for the next 15 minutes."

Remmy: Exactly. Exactly.

Bea: So Cas uses his powers to hold the door shut but it's not going to last for long, and so Sam comes up with another plan on his feet. He starts calling for the reaper Jessica, knowing that there was a specific Reaper assigned to him and his brother. 

Remmy: Yeah. He's like, "Jessica —" and I'm like, who? Who dat?

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: But Cas says, who dat, and then we explain. Okay. So Billie — Death — said that we have a Reaper assigned to us, monitoring us at all times. We have Sam calling for Jessica and someone shows up, but it's not Jessica. It's Violet. The reaper Violet.

Bea: Yes, and oh my God, she's fantastic. 

Remmy: [sings] I love her.

Bea: She shows up and she's just like, "It's my shift. We have shifts now because you mess up so, so many things."

Remmy: [laughs] I know. I love her so much. It was great, and she has shown herself only to Sam, or has tried to show herself only to Sam, because Jack and Cas cannot see or hear her. Michael can though, and she seems a little — Violet seems a little intimidated by Michael, but she powers through. She's talking to Sam and only Sam. Sam says, "We need to get out of here," and Violet says, "And I offer my full emotional support in your endeavors."

Bea: Ohh, she's so good.

Remmy: And he says, "I don't need your emotional support. I need your actual support! Get us out of here, and she just...

Bea: Yeah, we need physical help getting out of here. 

Remmy: She just puts her hands and she's like, "Sorry!" and he's trying to wear her down. He's like, don't feed me that bull crap "keeping your hands clean". Like, we will die and Michael will get loose if you do not help us right now. She's just like, "Ugh, I cannot." She segues from "I won't" to "I can't", except she seems to get a little phone call. 

Bea: Yes, but before we get to that phone call, I thought it was really interesting that Michael spoke to her and said, "In my world we locked Death away and enslaved the Reapers." Like, just more insight into the f***ery that was the apocalypse world.

Remmy: Well, we know that even Lucifer did the same thing in our apocalypse, right? He bound Death and he had some semblance of control over the Reapers. Or actually, maybe the reaper-control is something of my own imagination. But Lucifer did bind Death. So maybe something similar happened to Michael and I don't want to get too much into it now, but you bring this up — you saying, Michael said, “In my world we bound Death and enslaved the Reapers,” — I'm going to revisit that "we" later. So...

Bea: All right. 

Remmy: I have thoughts. 

Bea: Okay. But yes, like you said, Violet basically gets a phone call. She's like [shushes] I'm listening, and then she changes her mind. All of these pleas that Sam has been doing, like, "You owe us for the Rowena thing," and she's, "Oh yeah, the Rowena thing that you started? Mhmm." But she drops them off at the bunker.

Remmy: Well, Sam says, "How did you do that?" Or I think it was Jack said, how did you do that? And Violet answers, "I didn't," and then she disappears. She poofs away. 

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: But yeah, yeah. We're back at the bunker. We cut to black, but we come right back to Michael, now chained to a column in the war room. Yeah.

Bea: And my notes, they just have DUMB!! 

Remmy: Well, I don't know, because we're — 

Bea: If it's a supporting structure?

Remmy: Yeah, but with his powers bound — you're right — but with his powers bound, we can assume he doesn't have his super strength and he can't just fight them off or tear down the column. But this is the conversation that our heroes are having, right? We have Sam, Cas, and Jack, and they're discussing, "What are we going to do with him? Is this the smart move here?"

Bea: Yeah. "We have a dungeon. We have a perfectly good dungeon. How come he's not there?"

Remmy: Yeah, Jack says it. "Should we put him in the dungeon?" And Sam says, "These cuffs are all that we have. If he can break the cuffs, the dungeon's not going to hold."

Bea: Yeah, yeah. Like, we're boned regardless what setting we want to have the boning take place in. [laughs] 

Remmy: [laughs] Exactly, and we're trying, trying. We need a plan. What are we going to do? 

Bea: Yeah, and so Sam's calling back to his own experience. He's saying that when Gadreel had possessed him, it took Crowley's help in order to get him out; is there something similar that they could do to try and get to Dean and get him out?

Remmy: And they say, "Well, Crowley's dead," but any demon would do. They don't say this, but I'm thinking well, it doesn't have to be Crowley. Any demon can do. Possession or regardless, that is bringing us to, "Okay. We have to get into Dean's mind one way or another."

Bea: Yes, but we can't go too far along the line because Maggie has called again. So Sam's talking to her and just essentially telling her to, you know, "If you can go pop over to Hitomi Plaza, the Impala's parked in the basement and Garth is in the trunk. Love you, bye!" 

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Maggie calls and she says, "Okay. We're on our way to the plaza," and Sam says, "We're actually back in Lebanon," and she says, "... What?"

Bea: Yeah. "How the f*** does that work?"

Remmy: Yeah. And also, I'm like, are we just leaving the Impala there? We gotta get someone to drive it back!

Bea: I'm like, who's got the keys? 

Remmy: Oh my god! Dean would have the keys. Where are the keys? He doesn't have his clothes anymore. 

Bea: Oh my God. "And the Impala was never seen again."

Remmy: The Impala was never seen again and Garth suffocates in the truck. 

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: Oh no. Well, so.

Bea: RIP.

Remmy: Sam asks, how's it looking over there? And Maggie says the attacks have stopped and it seems like the monsters are leaving the city.

Bea: Yeah. Funny thing you should mention it: they are all heading west. And Michael's like, "Remind me, what direction is the bunker compared to Kansas City?" and they're like, ah, f*** this player's behind it. 

Remmy: Uh-huh. Michael has called his monsters to again break him out of the situation and he says, right out, "Nothing has changed. I will still break out of these cuffs. One way or another — my monsters will liberate me or I'll break these chains myself — but one way or another, everyone tonight is going to die."

Bea: Yeah. "Tonight everybody dies."

Remmy: Yes. "And Sam? This smiling face is the last thing you're ever going to see," y'know, calling — evoking emotion behind "my brother's face is not my brother."

Bea: Yeah. "This pretty little smile as I rip you apart."

Remmy: Oh my God.

Bea: So he has done his little "y'all are gonna die" moment thing. And so the next scene is [in] the library, and Sam is rolling out the British Men of Letters mind-link device. He's thinking that they can use it to wake up Dean and force Michael out. Cas just says that, "If he can." I'm like [sighs] 

Remmy: Yeah! But like — Cas, don't be a downer. Come on.

Bea: He's scared because of what Michael has said. He has given two monologues — two separate episodes, we have seen him being like, "I have crushed Dean into dust," like, I have drowned this f***er. I have buried him so deep he is not coming back. And so they are operating on the hope — the hope that Michael mocked them for — but there is still this hope without having evidence that it's going to lead to anything. I just — I felt that moment of fear and doubt that came from that "if he can," like if we go through all of this and Dean isn't too broken to put up the fight.

Remmy: "If we even can get into Dean's mind, what are we going to find there?" That's something that we actually revisit a little bit later as well. But yeah, it's a — there is a lot of fear there, for sure. 

Bea: Yes. There's a lot of uncertainty but, like Sam says, this is all we got.

Remmy: And uncertainty — we jump back into Dean's mind, what they would find there. We're with Dean back in Rocky's [Bar]. And we're living a loop. We see now that this is a loop. He's not just living out — it's not a djinn dream. It's a...

Bea: It's an enclosed loop. Like you're saying, there is this set of events that — there's slight variations thereupon, but it's the same routine that he's playing through.

Remmy: And can I take a second to consider why [it’s] this sequence of events, right, to be a loop. In this one little one-hour sequence of events, do we hit on everything that Dean would need to be content and to stay content, and to stay under the spell of contentment and to not fight back? He never becomes aware enough to fight back because he never has a reason to want to. But in just this one sequence, we have Cas and Sam out hunting but safe and they're on the way back. We have Dean with friends — Pamela — and just enjoying [each other], not distracted by customers. Dean just tending the bar.

Bea: Well, and the businesswoman comes in and Dean gets to flex his autonomy. He gets to assert that this is what he wants. And so, like you're mentioning, "Okay, does this loop have everything he wants?" It makes me think about Heaven and what Heaven is like. Heaven is these contained moments and I would assume that they would loop as well. But the difference I would say is that Dean's little self-contained moment here, it has anticipation in it. Like, it's raining outside, and so we have to stay inside for now, but the storm will let up eventually. And Sam and Cas aren't here right now, but they're on their way home and they'll get here eventually. There is this thread of Dean's little vision with Rocky's Bar that has him being satisfied with waiting in the moment, because there's these things that are always just coming on the horizon.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, and rounding out the fantasy, we have Dean getting his own fix and satisfaction in killing the monster.

Bea: Yes. He still has his hunt going on. It's just come to him. It's delivery.

Remmy: [laughs] Not DiGiorno. 

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: Oh, no. Wait, that would be the other way around. Anyways.

Bea: But yeah, about his third time that we have seen this cut between events, this third loop, Dean has a moment where he's experiencing some déjà vu. And so it makes me wonder that even if Cas and Sam hadn't come up with this plan, how long would it be for Dean to realize that something strange is going on here, and for him to try and make his own move. 

Remmy: Yeah. He has this little déjà vu moment and he shakes it off, but I looked at that in two ways. Either Michael only has had a few minutes to do this construction and put Dean in this place before he was bound. So is it looping because Michael is not there to build more, or is this just something that Michael put him in and had been planning on putting Dean in, but it's — 

Bea: It's shaky or something.

Remmy: It's shaky but I think that, given time, Michael would have all the time in the world to make sure that Dean doesn't get suspicious. But in this moment Michael is otherwise occupied. 

Bea: Yeah, that's a really good point because I do think that Michael would have pre-planned what this scenario is going to look like, but like you say, he was anticipating having more ability to glance over his shoulder and see how things are going back there and then make repairs as necessary. 

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: But he can't do that right now because the angel cuffs. 

Remmy: Mhmm. And Michael — back at the bunker, Michael and Jack are having a little talk. Sam and Cas are working out this mind machine thing, and Michael says, "So they left me with you." It's almost insulting.

Bea: Exactly. He's insulted that someone of such a quote-unquote low power grade is watching him. Michael says, "You're nothing," and Jack turns that around, "That's not what you said before," and it comes back to that question that you asked at the end of last episode. Like, what was Michael's motivations when he tried to extend the olive branch out to Jack? Michael's giving his answer here, but even that I don't think is sincere. 

Remmy: No, he says — he answers actually more in line to what I was asking: Is Michael just lonely? Does he actually, genuinely want to go through his eternity with Jack so that he's not alone in it? And Michael says here that to ask Jack to be with him, it was a moment of familial weakness, and it's not a mistake that he would be making again.

Bea: And I thought it was really interesting to have Dean's face being the one saying this to Jack. Like, the layers that come with having Dean being the one that Jack sees as saying, "It was just a moment of weakness, because I thought of you as family and that's not happening again."

Remmy: Oh, yeah, and — but him saying that, that's what I was leaning towards. Like, did Michael really want Jack to go with him? But you, counter to that, were saying Michael is just taking the opportunity to throw that out there and he's not really invested on what Jack says either way.

Bea: Yeah, and I still maintain that opinion even after hearing what Michael said here.

Remmy: I agree.

Bea: Because what we see of Michael in this episode is, he is trying to find the raw nerves within each of the characters and then just push on them. And so I think that Dean, as being the vessel that Jack is perceiving saying these things, it's going back to the rough ground that they started on. Dean and Jack did not start on great terms, and Michael continues hammering that idea home here, saying Sam is in over his head and Dean is under control and, "I know how sad he was when you died ... on the outside," but [Jack] is just not Sam or Cas. Jack is a new burden. And so I think that even his answer to Jack's question of, "That's not what you said before," it's just — it's feeding down this line because it is the weakness he perceives in Jack's relationship with Dean.

Remmy: Oh, yeah his — like you said, it wasn't a sincere response. I actually agree that it was a response chosen carefully, and chosen deliberately, to drive in this point here, which is to say that Dean doesn't actually care about you. "Dean wasn't happy when you died, but he just didn't care."

Bea: Yeah, he was just indifferent to your place in his life. 

Remmy: Oh, oh — and like you said, let's take this here now. He says to Jack, "You're not Sam. You're not Castiel. He doesn't actually care about you. You're just a job. An unwanted responsibility." Now, let's take this — where he says to Jack, because he knows it's going to hurt Jack, "Dean doesn't care about you. You know who he cares about. He cares about his family and you are separate from his family."

Bea: Yeah, let's take that little moment here and like put a pin in it and revisit with Michael's conversation with Sam and Cas later, because you start seeing all the bulls*** that he's weaving.

Remmy: Yes. Yes, exactly. It's all bulls*** and it does not — it does not hold up under scrutiny. Yeah.

Bea: Yeah, but Jack is just getting this full wave and he's the first one, really, taking the hit individually. Cas comes in, calls Jack away, but it's like a bit of the damage has already been done. It doesn't matter that Cas is telling him don't believe anything Michael says, he's lying — and Michael, in the background, "No, I'm not. And I can still hear you." [laughs] 

Remmy: [laughs] I know. I'm just like, oh my God. So many eyerolls. 

Bea: Just this smarmy Hannibal Lecter. 

Remmy: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely good comparison. Good, good pull there, yeah. So we cut from here — Jack exiting and Cas coming in — and I'm already like, chinhands, what is Michael going to say to Cas? What are we gonna see? How is he gonna use Dean's feelings against him? But we cut to the side of a road, and a road sign that says "Welcome to Lebanon", and we see that Maggie and the hunters have blockaded this highway just outside of Lebanon. Maggie's on the phone with one of the other cars of this caravan of hunters, and the man that Maggie's talking to says, "They got ahead of us. They're coming your way. Big, black van."

Bea: Yeah, they're coming up the hell right now. And so Maggie's like, well, it's time to bring out the hero speech. 

Remmy: Uh-huh. She's like [laughs] she's like, "Uhh, guys?"

Bea: "I know I didn't rehearse for this one, but I'm gonna give it my best shot." [laughs] 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: She's so earnest. Yeah. 

Remmy: She really is.

Bea: She's giving a speech about how Sam and Dean have given them all a second chance and this is a way that they could repay them, by making sure that the monsters don't get to the bunker.

Remmy: And also, I mean, this is the bunker. This is the hunter hub, right? They're protecting their own territory. They are invested in this. 

Bea: Yeah, this is their square zero too.

Remmy: Exactly. So they're all set up with our guns and we see the black van come up, but it stops and we cut on this Mexican standoff here. 

Bea: Yeah, so there's next to no time and we cut back to Michael and Cas. Michael is trying at first to poke at the way that Castiel has been a quote-unquote nursemaid to a Nephilim. And I — we said earlier, okay, he's looking for weak points. He tried this one first and it goes nowhere. Cas is unshakeable there.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And so then Michael is pointing out that this Castiel is anemic compared to the one from his world. 

Remmy: Yeah, and that's another button that he's trying to push to — haha haha, because I'm not going to get into the other world Cas too much but we do know — 

Bea: 20 seconds. [laughs] 

Remmy: We do know that the alt Cas was a honed weapon, right? Cas, blinded in one eye was...

Bea: Yeah, it speaks to the physical tools they were using to make him how he was. That these lobotomies, these... Yeah. 

Remmy: Yeah. And so Michael would know that the Castiel of his world, he was created to be this weapon. He was not inherently a follower of Michael's war, and I don't know. To have Michael poking and on that almost like, "Look at what you became."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: And Michael would know that that is not... [sighs] Oh man.

Bea: Well, what I'm hearing from you is that he was trying to say, "Who you are now is still malleable." Like, you might feel faith in who you are now, but you could have very easily gone a different path and there's no saying that I couldn't make you go that path. Just this sense of... He senses the certainty that Cas has, his faith in the family he's chosen on Earth, and he's trying to pick at it and still isn't quite working. 

Remmy: No, because he can't pick at that faith.

Bea: Because Cas has grown so much this season! Just... claws my face off.

Remmy: And as rebellious as we can assume the alt Cas was against this apocalypse initially, before he was forced into this other thing, that Castiel did not have his family, did not have the Winchesters. [He] did not find the thing that he could have that unshakable faith in. And that's what Michael says next, isn't it? He says, "What is it about this world that makes you love it so much?"

Bea: Yeah. Cas had retaliated to these pokes by saying that he thinks that Michael's confusing loyalty and compassion with weakness. But Michael is combating everything that Cas is trying to bring to him, like, "Why do you hate this world so much you want to destroy it?" and Michael...

Remmy: Ooh. Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: This — I was like, finally! We get this laser sharp hone-in on Michael's motivations.

Remmy: And it's so good. 

Bea: It is stellar, and the way that it plants questions that come up throughout the rest of this season, it's so good.

Remmy: We — oh my God. Okay. So in this Cas and Michael talk, we don't have Michael using Dean's feelings against Cas. Not yet. Here, we are opening the book on Michael's motivations, because Castiel asks, "Why do you want to destroy this world?" And Michael says, "Because I can." But then, instantly his face betrays his words. 

Bea: Yes. This flippancy isn't sincere and he actually — it's like he craves the opportunity to actually spell this out, and he didn't do it to Jack, but here he has another angel who's sitting there asking him these questions of why. It's like Michael has decided that this is an audience that he can at least impart this to.

Remmy: And as much as Michael says, "I am the biggest thing there is and even angels are so far below me. They're not worth my notice." I don't know. Michael really puts down monsters and humans, "These are insects. These are atoms to something as me," and that's what he says to Jack. He's trying to explain to Jack, "You don't know what time it is, but you will." I think that honestly, with Cas, it's almost like, finally here is someone who could understand. Because he says, "In my world, me and my brother — me and Lucifer — what we did. We were not hindered in starting and finishing this fight. This apocalypse. And when we did, we expected — we thought that God would come back."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: "We thought that when we would destroy this Earth that God claimed to love, that God would come back and he would explain himself. He would tell us why he left. He would answer our questions, but you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing happened." And you can see in him that this is, like...

Bea: This is personal.

Remmy: Yeah, it's very personal.

Bea: He has spent a lot of time trying to act like he is above other figures, that he is superior, and yet here he has a moment to speak with one of his siblings and explain that what — in essence, it boils down to he wanted his dad to come home so he could talk to him. When that didn't happen, he's like, "Okay, you know what? I'm gonna throw a f****** tantrum," but he didn't decide to throw the tantrum until he was in Dean, and he got to have insight into just what exactly God's motivations were for keeping away. 

Remmy: Exactly. Yeah.

Bea: And God's motivations were that "he doesn't care."

Remmy: I thought it was so interesting that in his world — in Michael's world — he ended that world and nothing happened. What he expected to happen, God's return, did not happen. And then he went to this world, this different world, and he was going to basically try again, but then in Dean — in possessing Dean — he got some of those answers. Dean actually knows more about God, Chuck, than this Michael did. God actually has revealed himself to us in this world, and we know — we have some insight into his motivations and who he is. As Michael says, "God is a writer, and I understand now that my world — this world. This, that or the other — they're all just drafts. The second that it starts to go not as planned, those drafts are discarded. God moves on because God doesn't care."

Bea: Yeah. He said that because God is a writer, and like all writers he churns out draft after draft, and the worlds are nothing but failed drafts. As soon as he realizes they're flawed, he moves on and tries again. I thought it was really telling that at first Cas tries to deny this, but he cuts off. He can't, and instead he asks why God would do that. 

Remmy: Yeah, Cas wants — 

Bea: He wants to defend.

Remmy: He reflexively wants to deny it. Yeah, but then you can see him thinking about it, and he has no argument against that. God is inscrutable, but this is kinda a seed of well, what else?

Bea: “S***, this sounds like the truth.”

Remmy: Yeah, God did abandon this world. There's nothing you can say to Michael that doesn't make that any less true.

Bea: And I — again, I thought that it was really insightful that Michael here gives a sincere, emotional reaction to Cas' question about why God would do that. Michael gets to this aggressive place where he says, "Because God doesn't care. He doesn't care about you, me, or anything. I initially thought that I'd try to one-up him," but now Michael just wants to burn through the world until he "catches up to the old man" and kills him himself.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder when he made that decision. Because he says, "At first, I wanted to do better than he did. Be more God than God. Become the God of this world. But now I just want to burn it down," and I wonder when was exactly that moment? Did he come to this world to be more God than God, but then when he possessed Dean and he learned about Chuck, is that when he decided that he was going to destroy worlds until he could find Chuck? I don't know. I was just — I was thinking mostly about episode 1 Michael, going to killers and holy men and demons and asking them the question, "What do you want?" Was that him trying to figure out how he was going to make this world a better world, or…? I don't know.

Bea: To me, yes, he was still on the thought of being a better God than God at that point. I feel like it was at some point when he had stepped out of Dean and was possessing these other vessels that Michael soured to this initial [plan]. And it could have been that, "Hey, this is taking a lot more work than I actually want to put in." Like, the amount of effort that is required to be better than God. "What am I doing if that is my way of trying to one-up the old man? Am I just going to do that in perpetuity until he shows up? Know what, f*** that. No. I'm going to just crumple this draft up and I'm going to keep on ripping drafts out of the book until I find him." I think it was something along those lines, that he just — I don't know. He seems to be more attuned to destruction than creating and maintenance thereupon. And so I think that he just lost interest in the thought of being God

Remmy: And I think that the more time passed, the more he saw the flaws of the world. That was his thing in episode 1, right? He was going to these people and he was asking them, "What do you want?" and all he saw was lies. Talking about failed drafts, I mean, it's just like, yeah, he does just want to crumple up that page and move on, and as time passes he gets more and more angry at God and at all these unanswered questions. He just wants to catch up to God and demand those answers, and Cas says, "What would you do then?" and Michael finishes out to say, "Even God can die."

Bea: Yeah, I think Michael has a real confirmation bias in whatever he is working towards. He just has this axe to grind against God, and so his interpretation of everything that he's coming across on this world, he's going to bend towards that flavor. To have this quote-unquote captive audience in Cas, where he can finally speak to someone who would understand having faith in this father that will return someday after aeons and never seeing it fulfilled... Then he goes, "You know what? I'm actually going to do something about this. I'm going to make that f***er bleed."

Remmy: Yes. I loved it. 

Bea: This makes him a very compelling character, because he was sort of obfuscated up to this point. Like, what is his motivation? We had a lot of question marks that came up, and so to have this opportunity to have him sit down with Cas and be like, "Here is some actual raw emotion and not just the bulls*** that I'm spinning you," that was really good.

Remmy: That exactly was my biggest beef with this character. I don't know if I talked about it overmuch in this podcast. I know I've mentioned it before: Michael, what do you want? But on first watch, I was really big on that. Michael, what do you want? Like I said, it was my biggest beef with the character. I was just — all these questions.

Bea: And now we have hindsight with this moment. Yeah.

Remmy: Yeah, this moment was everything I could have wanted. It was the best kind of payoff. It left me super satisfied. And it was a really good scene. 

Bea: Yeah. I like anytime that a show gives you something that allows you, upon re-watching it, to get a deeper level from it. And so I think even if I rewatch season 13, there would be this new, compelling background for him too, that at that point he was still thinking of ways of how to just basically find his dad. It's during this season that he goes, "You know what? F*** the old man. I'm bringing a shiv and we're dealing with this old-school."

Remmy: And, very briefly, this is the "we" I was talking about. So Michael here, he says, "Me and my brother, me and my Lucifer, we thought that this would bring God back." So it was almost like — I don't know. It just makes me think of family, and it makes me think of um...

Bea: Yeah. That they allowed themselves to be pitted against each other with this thought of, “If we fight long and hard enough, maybe Daddy will return.”

Remmy: Right. Exactly. Just how much of this fight was honest resentments, or how much of this fight was playing out a role? 

Bea: Yeah, and how did his Lucifer's death come about? Was it something that was done in cold blood? Was it something that was unintentional but happened? It raises that gray area too.

Remmy: And how does Michael feel about it? Yeah. So, so. When Michael said, “We locked away Death and enslaved the Reapers.” I don't know. It made me think of the Michael and Lucifer "we" that he's using here.

Bea: Yeah. Yeah, I would say that was more what it evoked too. I don't think of the "we" from his conversation with Violet as being himself and his squadron of angels. It seems to me that Michael is always someone who's trying to speak to those upper power grades, and so if he's saying "we" then he is referring to Lucifer or someone on par with him.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, and that's what — it's that same sort of thing speaking, to those upper-grade beings that I think is, in his mind, what made it okay to reveal so much of himself to Cas, and to want to. To almost be happy to open up. 

Bea: Yeah. "I'm glad you asked!"

Remmy: It's like a craving for this moment of, "I can say this to you and you would understand."

Bea: Yeah. I'm gonna save us the air time of how we bring that back to his relationship with Jack, but there is this degree of — I'm almost stepping back on my initial thought. He does have some loneliness to him, but he's very selective in who he's going to allow to be in his audience. He's so warped at this point that if he views you as lesser then [you’d] just be used as a tool that he can bend.

Remmy: Yeah. 

Bea: I feel like that's enough Michael feels. I think we have hammered that one to death. [laughs] 

Remmy: Oh, no that — again, that doesn't sound like us at all. [laughs] 

Bea: No, no no. I mean, we'd never said we were only going to limit ourselves to 20 seconds, so...

Remmy: [laughs] 

Bea: So yeah, from there we go back to Maggie and the hunters. There's this black van approaching, or it's parked — I forget which one precisely happened. 

Remmy: I think in the previous scene we saw it approaching and they had readied themselves. 

Bea: Okay.

Remmy: But nothing had emerged from the van yet. So now we're back right where we were before. They're all lined up to fire on this van except nothing is happening. 

Bea: Yeah, they approach on the van but there's no movement and indeed when they throw the doors open, it's empty. And so they circle around it and we have our one f****** chuckle hero. He's like, “I'm gonna go run off into the bush to see if they went in there.” It's like, "Buddy system! Sam said buddy system!" He's like, "No, I know better," and so he runs off.

Remmy: Maggie calls out, "Don't go in the woods aloooone... He's already gone."

Bea: Yeah, bye.

Remmy: Bye.

Bea: But then he pops out. He goes, "Nope. They went off on foot to the bunker. We better hurry back there. They got around us," and she's basically like, f***. 

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. 

Bea: Yeah, and in the bunker, Sam has set out the mind link device. Jack is asking if it's going to work and if it doesn't, well, he might be able to help if he uses some of his magic. Sam's like, "Dean wouldn't want to be saved that way."

Remmy: Right, because Sam says if you use your powers, your magic, then you would be burning your soul to do it, and that's not what Dean would want.

Bea: Yeah, but Jack still isn't super convinced that this machine is going to work, and he's trying to say, like, what happens — you have no idea what will happen when you get into Dean's mind.

Remmy: Right. We're revisiting that ‘assuming the worst’ right here. Sam says, "The last time that Michael had Dean trapped, Dean said it felt like he was drowning. This time it could be much, much worse."

Bea: Yeah, and they just they can't abide [by it]. Sam cares too much and he can't allow himself to have the room of second-guessing or doubting. 

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: So they have the machine set up and they are hooking up the little... electrodes?

Remmy: Nodes, yeah.

Bea: To Michael's head, and they are saying that if Sam goes in, Cas should be able to hitch a ride. And Michael: "Oh, Cas. I believe in you." I'm like, you... [sighs] 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, and Sam is connecting the electrodes and Michael gives a little sarcastic shiver, like, ooh.

Bea: "Cool science experiment." I'm gonna f****** fight you.

Remmy: Oh my God. Yes. [laughs]

Bea: In the parking lot behind the school, where all the smokers are. Meet me there. I'm throwing fists.

Remmy: Well, also, we just saw some vulnerability from Michael, and now we're right back on the bulls***. So.

Bea: Yep. Conceal, don't feel.

Remmy: [laughs] And Sam hooks himself up and — oh no, it's Cas that has been hooking up all these all these wires, but they're in position and Cas has Sam by the shoulder so that he can, as you said, hitch a ride.

Bea: Yes. They've asked Jack to stand guard while they're in there. 

Remmy: Uh-huh.

Bea: And Michael is trying to say, "Well, in there, you're all mine." Just this last little antagonistic nip before they flip the switch on and they enter into Dean's mind. 

Remmy: Yeah. He says, "I'm all for it. Out here you have me bound by these cuffs, but in there, that's my playground."

Bea: Yeah. And again, this is Hannibal Lecter type s***.

Remmy: It's totally psychological.

Bea: It's like Rorschach in Watchmen, where he's like, "I'm not in here with you. You're in here with me." He's trying to pull, like you're saying, a psychological move on them.

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And so they flip the switch and they enter into Dean's mind. When they arrive in there, it's just a black room with Sam and Cas. 

Remmy: Now, this scene is another ‘hit you in the feels’ scene.

Bea: F*** yeah. Brace yourself because — 

Remmy: Holy hell.

Bea: Whoever was responsible for layering the audio.

Remmy: Yeah, whoever had to — whatever team had to go back and do these trauma moment/happy moment [clips]...

Bea: Just imagine that writers' team. Okay, they’re sitting in the room, they're like, "When were they the most miserable?" Like, oh I can think of so many. [laughs] 

Remmy: Yeah. So this little — I don't know what to call it. It's not a montage; just these clips of — 

Bea: Medley.

Remmy: Yeah, this medley of trauma. Well, we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Okay, so we're in this blank, dark space and it's basically Sam and Cas walking through the darkness. It's almost that same thing, just total emptiness. And Sam says, "Where are we?" and Cas says, "In Dean's mind." Sam says, "Well, where is Dean?" and Cas answers, "That's a good question." And he, with his little glowy hand, starts scanning Dean's memories and he's looking for something specific. From the go, we are hearing these horrible moments. 

Bea: Yeah, these real low points that Dean has been through.

Remmy: Right.

Bea: And that we as the audience can recognize. 

Remmy: Yes. Dean in Hell. Dean when Sam died. 

Bea: The vision that he had of his demon self before he was taken to Hell.

Remmy: Right. All of these Dean moments, or all of these low point moments.

Bea: Yeah, and Cas is just like, "Oh, such trauma, many scars."

Remmy: [laughs] But he's — yeah, and Sam can hear these memories that Cas is scanning through and he says, 'What is this?" and Cas says, "If I knew what I was looking for, then I could just take us there. So I am searching Dean's trauma to find where Michael buried him again," working under this assumption that, as Michael said — 

Bea: That if they wade through Dean's most terrible moments then Michael — this current prison he's formed for Dean is somewhere within them.

Remmy: Right. Michael has said that he has crushed Dean so thoroughly, he would never fight. He would never be able to find his way out.

Bea: [sing-song] But Michael's a f****** liar. 

Remmy: Well no, he has though! I mean, well...

Bea: Michael hasn't crushed him. Michael has put him in a place that he won't want to leave. It's very different. He spoke with the intention of Sam and Cas and Jack having no hope of rescuing Dean in any fashion, and yet they're still like, "Two middle fingers way up! We're gonna do what we want."

Remmy: And now, before we go to Sam reaching that conclusion — that maybe trauma is not what we're looking for — let's go back to Cas saying there's so much trauma, so many scars, and Sam says, well, yeah, this is...

Bea: "But Dean's strong."

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, Dean can take it. And Cas says, "Dean is more than strong, and—” no, what does Cas say exactly?

Bea: No, that's what he says. He says, "Dean's more than strong. But if I knew where what I'm looking for, I could go there."

Remmy: And Sam says, "You're right. Dean would endure."

Bea: Yeah. Sam's saying that it's probably not trauma, because last time he fought. Dean thrives on trauma, it keeps him alert. And so if Michael wants him to be lulled or no longer fighting, then stick him somewhere where he's content and he'll relax. "So let's look through the good."

Remmy: Right? Right, right. Sam says if Michael would want Dean to stop fighting he would give him something that he had never had before, and Cas says, "Contentment." And...

Bea: [groans] 

Remmy: [laughs] I know! 

Bea: Hi, that was my kidney you just hit.

Remmy: Yeah, low f****** blow, man. Yeah.

Bea: Just that meme — "Is this contentment?"

Remmy: [laughs] But Cas says, "You're right," and he starts scanning those happy memories that we get some snippets, everything from perky nipples to — 

Bea: Oh my God.

Remmy: Stripper Sam. [laughs] 

Bea: I couldn't pick out any of the happy dialogue because I was like hmm [tsks] 404, footage not found in my head.

Remmy: [laughs] Well, okay, so I actually should have just rewound more. I didn't catch some of the things that were being said in Dean's happy memories, but it did seem like a dialogue was a bit more distinct. So I rewound and then I had the thought, "Oh, I'm going to turn the subtitles on."

Bea: A-ha!

Remmy: "That's what I should have done the first time," and so through the happy memories of subtitles on Netflix actually did tell me everything that was — all the memories that we're going through on the contentment, the happy memories scan. I didn't go back to the trauma just because... I don't know, 60% of it was "Sammy!" and then the other 40% of it was him screaming in pain. So. [laughs] 

Bea: Yeah. There's just Name that Time and Place. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. But we had some more dialogue bits in the contentment, but it was just basically Dean uncomplicatedly happy, which has not been...

Bea: Again, I'm like 404.

Remmy: Yeah, exactly. And Sam starts to hear — 

Bea: Some of the things that we heard at the start of this episode.

Remmy: Exactly. 

Bea: "Rocky's not for sale," and, "Never had anything this nice."

Remmy: This bar, yeah.

Bea: Sam just turns an ear towards that and is like, "That never happened. Let's go there."

Remmy: Yeah. This is new. This is something unfamiliar. This is where we need to go, and Cas brings them right into Rocky's. 

Bea: Yes, and Dean is just so happy to see them, just like, "Ey! Kill the ghoul, get a beer!" Just... [sighs]

Remmy: Yeah. So now Sam and Cas are in the bar and this is a break in that loop. This is a break in the routine, but — 

Bea: Dean doesn't recognize it.

Remmy: Yeah, Dean doesn't recognize it as a break in the routine. He says, "Hey! Finally you guys are back. How's the hunt? Grab a beer, pull up a stool," and my heart. But, oh my God. Pamela is also behind the bar and she says, "Hey, guys, I was starting to get worried. I'm glad you're safe." And I'm just like dying. I'm dying. But obviously Cas and Sam are very taken aback here. They have a little aside — Cas says, "Didn't I blind her when she saw my true form?" and then Sam answers, "Yeah, and then she died."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: "She was killed by demons during the apocalypse." And yeah... [laughs nervously] 

Bea: Meanwhile, Dean's pouring them an IPA from Austin and that "you'll love it!"

Remmy: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Bea: Again, we have our little Family Business Beer Co. easter eggs being planted here. 

Remmy: I know, it's so good. And you know, I like to think that maybe they sat Jensen down and they asked him, “Okay, we want to build your perfect after.”

Bea: What would Dean want here?

Remmy: Yeah, we want your — I don't think that they could build Dean's “after” without asking Jensen and getting Jensen's input on that. I see here, in this Rocky's Bar, what they didn't do correctly with, um...

Bea: Lisa. 

Remmy: Lisa. Yeah, like season 3, season 4, Lisa.

Bea: Season 5, season 6.

Remmy: Right, right. You're right. I don't know. That whole apple pie thing that we saw at the end of season 5 and went in on season 6. It was [sighs] it was a forced... I don't know.

Bea: It's something that Dean thinks that he longs for, as opposed to what he actually does. What we get the impression of is that Dean wants to have a life with hunting, but also [have] his friends and family safe around him. He couldn't really envision the two things together. So he either has ‘everything is safe’, which to him is normal life, or he has his life, and it's in this Rocky's Bar that we really get to see the blending of the two.

Remmy: And it's so interesting to see how this dream has evolved in the narrative, from season 6 to now. It seems more genuine.

Bea: Yes, that Dean actually has something, that if he tried to do this in the future, it would stick.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, so...

Bea: And I was thinking about the way that, say, Sam approaches the hunter hub to the way that Dean approaches this bar. Sam, when he is working with other hunters, he sees himself in this position where he has the information. He has the lore, the research, everything that they need in order to be safe. "I'm giving them a buddy system," and, "We're doing body cams," and we're bringing an educational force to this. He is very much just looking at the hunter's life and seeing the things from outside you could bring to it to make it safer and make it better. 

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: But Dean is doing something similar in that he wants to have this ground zero where hunters can come and trade information. But ultimately what Dean is looking for is some place where hunters can take their hat off, kick up their boots, and just rest and know that they are safe. He isn't really looking at giving them information — being their Bobby or having their back. He just wants to have a place where hunters can come to and be safe.

Remmy: [strained] Mhmm...

Bea: Mhmm.

Remmy: [laughs] Okay, wait. Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: Sam and Dean — 

Remmy: No, no, no. I have — I have many things to say. Don't. Yep. Yep. Yep. Just... [sighs] 

Bea: I was just saying, Sam and Dean, they are both so in this life, and it's really curious to see how Sam — who had left for Stanford, who had really tried to do the normal life and he got sucked back in — he's actually the one who stays more embedded in the hunter aspect of his life, when given the opportunity.

Remmy: Well, I can talk — I could talk for literal days on how Sam lashed out and struck out with Stanford. It was one part a "f*** you" but one part — I don't know it. I see Stanford, for Sam, as an experiment. It was what he thought he wanted but it wasn't actually what he wanted. We are told, again and again and again, that Sam was always a better hunter than Dean was. Now, take that as you will. I mean, agree or disagree, but that's what the narrative tells us. Sam took to hunting as a duck to water, always, and for him to leave it, it was...

Bea: It was more of a "f*** you" to John than it was a — again, it was what Dean was doing with Lisa and this vision of the suburbs. "This is what I want. This is normal." But when you actually are doing it, you go, "Well, this is just what I thought I wanted."

Remmy: Yeah, and then on Dean side of things, we see him — what we have revealed over the years is these, you know, the slow reveal of these resentments. We're told, again and again, that this is all Dean wants from life. He loves hunting. He's good at hunting. This is the family business, and this is all Dean wants from life.

Bea: He's put all his stats into hunting and he's not looking to re-roll.

Remmy: But then as we learn more about Dean growing up, and Dean in the Stanford era, and even what Dean is thinking now, here — I think that — Okay. Okay, I'm spiraling. Okay, but.

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: All these things, to me — what Dean is thinking now, how Dean is talking about a future. His future. These vacations he talks about, or even retirement in the last year. This bar here. All these things to me, through all these years, add up to Dean not being — the hunting is not what he wanted or needed so much as what he was forced into. 

Bea: Well, he's shedding that part of his identity. It was something that he held so firmly as being intrinsically him, but he's had enough time and I think enough experience as himself to start going, "Well, what do I actually want? Not what I was told that I want, or what I was raised to want. What do I actually want?" It's this really simple [want] — he wants to be around his friends, and he wants his friends to be safe, and he wants his family to be safe. 

Remmy: And we talked — when this episode aired — we talked it to death, what this bar means for Dean and Dean's character, and Dean as a caretaker. That's what Dean is. Dean is a caretaker. But I think it all boils down to, as you said, how interesting it is to juxtapose Sam to Dean. I don't know if I used that word correctly so, sorry. [laughs]

Bea: I think it works. It's fine. It's got it.

Remmy: Yeah, fine. To look at Sam in season 12, and now season 14 and this hunter network, and how he is the Men of Letters of the hunters. He is the Bobby of the hunters. And then here, to see Dean... Sam wants to improve and take care of the hunters, and be the information hub.

Bea: And Dean's just happy sitting in the back room doing shots with his best friend while he's working on paperwork.

Remmy: Dean working on paperwork. I didn't even talk about that, but I had so many emotions! But Dean with this bar, he is the Ellen [Harvelle] to Sam's Bobby.

Bea: Exactly. I was thinking of that. He is The Roadhouse, here. 

Remmy: Yeah, exactly. It is so perfect to their respective personalities and, like I said, this whole... Oh my God. Oh my God. I have a stomach ache thinking about season 15. [laughs] 

Bea: Umm. Okay. And did you hear that apparently — I feel like they're trolling us — but that Jensen and Jared know how it ends for their characters?

Remmy: Sidebar: I think they must. I don't like — I don't know. I don't know. I don't like it, because I think that it will color how they play this season.

Bea: Yeah. And I'm like, if I catch one whiff of ‘everybody dies’ I'm going to be unhappy. [laughs] 

Remmy: To think that they know already what is going down. I just don't even know what to think about it.

Bea: I'm like, just don't kill them.

Remmy: I know. That's what we're talking about right here. We're looking at what their futures might look like, and what they want — one, what they want their futures to look like and two, what their futures could be, realistically. Sam could be "chief" to the hunter hub. He could build up Bobby's legacy and he could build up a new Men and Women of Letters, and he would excel at it. And then, on the other side of this coin, there's Dean who could be the next Roadhouse — who wants to be the next Roadhouse, and who wants this home base, and who wants to just be a place of safety and contentment for the — a place for these hunters to have somewhere to go and to, like you said, kick up their feet and take a load off. He could be that for people and that is Dean, and this is Sam, and this is what it could be and I'm so scared. I'm so scared, Bea.

Bea: I — I know. I'm just so scared that it's going to be one or the other, or both, die.

Remmy: [laughs hysterically] No. No, sorry.

Bea: Even if that happens, what's happening afterwards is a fix-it fic where Billie is just like, "Ring a ding ding, m*********er. You thought you were going to nap in heaven? No, I got work for you."

Remmy: There's no way. There's no way, and — 

Bea: Are you kidding me? Like, f****** Jared was like, "I hope that like we both die at the end." I'm like, how can you go through 15 years and — [sighs] I don't know. I just think as a message for the show, it would f****** suck.

Remmy: I think that's more of a troll than anything else.

Bea: [whispers] I don't know. I don't trust — they're all trickster gods. [laughs] 

Remmy: They're all trickster gods. Um, yeah... It's gonna be okay. 

Bea: I'm just gonna drink until season 15 episode 20 comes out.

Remmy: [laughs] Hey, we still got a page and a half of notes to go.

Bea: I'm like, we're 30 minutes in!

Remmy: [laughs] Are we really? 

Bea: We are. The "kill a ghoul, get a beer," that's the 30-minute mark.

Remmy: Oh my gosh.

Bea: Yeah. Bonage.

Remmy: This is not our season 15 speculation episode. This is... [laughs] this is Sam and Cas desperately diving right in, desperately trying to expose this dream for what it is and convince Dean that this is not real. 

Bea: Yes. Okay. Bouncing back. Bouncing back. 

Remmy: [laughs] 

Bea: I'm ready. Lots of sad thoughts, but now we're going to good ones. So. Sam and Cas have showed up and they see Dean acting out this bartender role, and they immediately start arguing with him, trying to snap him out of it. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. They hop right in trying to get him to wake up from this unreality.

Bea: Yeah. And like, "Pamela's not even real!" and she's like, "I'm plenty real," and Cas — just calling her a 'complex manifestation made to distract Dean', and she's just, "Wow, you really know how to talk to women, huh." [laughs] 

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Bea: And they're just having difficulty differentiating between outside and ‘outside’, like okay, it's raining here? Reality. Come on. Let's go back there.

Remmy: I feel like we have Dean reacting genuinely in the moment. He doesn't — he's not given enough time to even grow serious about it, to react.

Bea: Yeah. He's been bubbly and jokesy with the businesswoman, with Pamela, and so to see them back? He's still following a dream logic where, "Oh, you guys are here!" and them arguing just doesn't have any grounds yet. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. So Sam and Cas are saying, "This isn't real," and Dean is responding but he's like, "Did you have some shots on the way here, or...?" basically. But Sam says, "This isn't real! It's all Michael," and Michael's the magic word because the loop resets. 

Bea: Yes. They're skipping like a needle on a vinyl record. They — at first Dean and Pamela disappear into the back room, then they're in the cooler. Then the scenery resets all over again, and Sam and Cas are just like, this is so weird. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah.

Bea: It resets to the vamps showing up, and both Sam and Cas get sprayed with blood, and then it resets again. And — oh my God.

Remmy: [laughs] Pam says, "Dang, guys. You guys got messy on the ghoul hunt there," and Sam — okay. When Sam gets sprayed by the decapitated vamp there, he looks so offended. He looks just so affronted.

Bea: Yeah. "I did not come here for this." [laughs] 

Remmy: [laughs] And then when it resets and Pam's like, "Man, guys. You guys need a shower."

Bea: "Rethink the beers, hey? You guys are sounding a little crazy."

Remmy: [laughs] Well, Cas says, "No, we did not get 'messy' on our ghoul hunt. We got messy right here, just now, when you decapitated a vampire in front of us," and that's when Pam is like, "Hahaha, had a few too many already. Okay."

Bea: [groans] 

Remmy: And Dean is still just not — he's not being allowed to catch up, I feel.

Bea: Yeah. It just isn't clicking, I think, because he's resetting too, you know?

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And Sam's trying to say, "The loop is in your mind. Michael is possessing you," and Dean only knows about their Michael, who's currently in the Cage. Oh my God, Pam's little, "Hey, Dean, if this is a dream can't you just lucid dream it? Float me—" I was like, I'm going to die. [laughs]

Remmy: Pamela's killing it. I love her. She's such — oh my God. She's such a dynamic character. I miss her a lot.

Bea: Oh, same here. 

Remmy: She — Sam and Cas are now pointing to Pam, like, "Dean, try to remember. Pam was blinded by Cas."

Bea: And then all of a sudden she's blind, and she's always been blind — "Thanks to Feathers over there" — and Cas [is] urgently telling Dean, "It was an accident." Like, "Please believe me, it was an accident."

Remmy: Well, you know what I really loved about it? He starts to say to Pamela — he starts to apologize to Pamela. He says, "That was — " 'an accident' is what follows, but he turns to Dean instead, because he's speaking to Dean with such urgency and such desperation, to say, "Dean, that was an accident," for him too. I would just say this is the moment we've been waiting for, right? As a fan, it was gratifying to see this happen, but then in the narrative it was super interesting to see the Cas say that.

Bea: Yes, he almost forgets that Pamela is just a projection and then he has to right it around onto Dean to say it.

Remmy: And it seems so important to him that Dean hear it.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: And Sam follows that to say, "And Dean try to remember — Pam died."

Bea: Yes, she died helping us, and then all of a sudden when [Dean] looks back to that side of the bar, Pamela is gone.

Remmy: Oh my God.

Bea: And Dean, looking upset. It's just like — his life, the dream — and Cas pointing out it's a dream. And just begging him to remember because they need him to come back. 

Remmy: I thought this was so interesting, that one, it was Cas, not Sam, that's making emotional plea here. He says, "This is a dream and you have a life outside of this. You have people who need you outside of this, and we need you to come back to us," and one, again, that it was Cas not Sam here making that emotional plea, and two, just how Misha and Cas sold it, the desperation in his — in him.

Bea: Yeah, because it follows for the way that's Sam and Cas' characters have been moving through the story. Sam has been the one that's been just head down, focusing on the next step that will get them closer towards their goal, and it's been Cas who has more of the doubts and the emotional fears as they're going through. Sam's been the puzzler whereas Cas has been sitting here in a more emotional state, and so now that they're finally in the position of talking to Dean, it's Sam who is sitting there still puzzling in the background, but Cas who's making the emotional play.

Remmy: That's a great point, and you're right. It is something that has been consistent through[out] the season. As a viewer, we always appreciate that. And talk about Sam puzzling, he lights on something. Something that would snap Dean out of it, and he says, "Poughkeepsie."

Bea: Yes. He whispers, "Poughkeepsie," and Dean has a twitch, like he — it hits something for him. And we get this flashback recollection of the things that Michael has suppressed. 

Remmy: I — so, with Cas, him pleading with Dean, trying to connect emotionally. We see in Dean — we talked about facial... [laughs] 

Bea: Mhmm. Face journeys.

Remmy: Face journeys. We see Dean coming out of it a little bit. He's so — up to this point, it's almost been a joke, you know? But here we're actually seeing a crack where there's something wrong, or this, "I see the urgency in you and I recognize that it's something that I need to respond to." And then Sam says, "Poughkeepsie," and Dean just breaks. For Sam to say that, there's no denying it anymore. There's no safety in the lie anymore. He has no choice. He didn't want to accept that what Cas and Sam were saying were true because he doesn’t want to depart from this happiness that he has found. He has been — subconsciously, or under Michael's influence — has been resistant to it, but between Cas bringing a seriousness to it that Dean can't ignore, and Sam saying the one thing that — 

Bea: Yeah, Sam hitting the red button.

Remmy: Yes. Sam hitting the red button. It's just like he — [sighs] it was hard. It was hard to watch because we want Dean to be happy, but he can't. [laughs]

Bea: It's breaking the dream. It's ‘this is just a dream’. Like Cas says, it's a dream.

Remmy: And we have broken this fantasy and now we have Dean remembering everything.

Bea: Yeah. Dean goes — he shudders and is like, "I remember. I remember everything," and in this moment where he's the most emotionally vulnerable, Michael — clapping — enters the bar. He's just like, "Hey, fellas," and I'm like, "Okay, f***-o."

Remmy: He's back in the cap.

Bea: Looks like the clown town has joined us again. 

Remmy: [laughs] Oh, man.

Bea: Dean is immediately agitated. 

Remmy: Well, I mean, just a scene ago, when we had Cas and Sam enter the dream, the second that Sam said ‘Michael’ Dean was removed from the situation.

Bea: Yeah. The record skipped.

Remmy: The record skipped. Exactly. 'Michael' was the magic word. And now, to have Michael here in the quote-unquote flesh, it's all coming back.

Bea: And it is just — it's not even the ‘right now’, but it's like, "You are — you did this to me once before, and here you are again and you're still doing it." Like, I can't be rid of you. There's this huge emotional iceberg and we're just seeing the tip of it.

Remmy: Yeah. And Michael goes back on his bulls***. [laughs] I guess?

Bea: Yeah, he's like, "I got a monologue. I just — I have lots of words. I got no one to listen to and you're all here, yay!"

Remmy: [laughs] 

Bea: And he's saying that he is Dean and he knows all of his inner bulls***. That he only tolerates Cas as an IOU for saving him from Hell, and he hasn't done anything but screw up since — this about Cas.

Remmy: Yeah. Michael [is] straight back into it. He is on the attack, but he's attacking Sam and Cas here. Coming in on Dean, as Michael's saying this, he's almost incredulous, shaking his head.

Bea: He's like, this is bulls***.

Remmy: Well, I don't know if we're there yet. But yes, that exactly. He's just shaking his head "no", but to Cas — and what we know of Cas — we see that this is hitting hard. This is everything that Cas fears. And then Michael goes straight into Sam to say, "And Sam, the happiest that Dean has ever been was when you left for college, leaving Dean and his dad to hunt without the burden that is you, his little brother," and, "Dean was glad that you left because he knows that you would do nothing but abandon him, again and again and again." And at this point, this is the, ‘Oh, no, bulls***,’ point because what we know is that was the worst moment of his life.

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: That was the worst period of his life. That was his most unhappiest, and Dean is almost stepping forward now. This is when his face is telling us this is absolute bulls***. "This is not my deepest darkest secrets from the people that I love. This is not true." But, counter for that, we see Sam — we see that this is hurting Sam.

Bea: Yeah, because I think what Michael is doing here is, like you say, he's not looking to hurt Dean with this. I think that this is more Dean's fears that this is Sam or Cas might think he thinks. And if these are the things he's afraid they believe of themselves, then Michael has just taken them and put them out in open air. And so initially it would be Dean's fear at having these things out there, but then it would be more his indignation and his anger at having these fears used to hurt Sam and to hurt Cas. He scared that this is what they think he thinks of them.

Remmy: Because this is Sam and Cas' biggest fears. We know this. We know — in regards to Dean — we know that Cas is really insecure about his place in the family, and that he feels he must make up for his mistakes.

Bea: Yeah. He has to have a usefulness. He has to prove why he should be around.

Remmy: Exactly. And with Sam, we know that — so with Sam is a little bit more complicated, because it's almost like Sam's fears for Dean are feeding into Dean's fears for Sam.

Bea: Well, I would say I think Sam is aware that Dean has this fear that he'll be abandoned, and that there's been times in his past where maybe he's done this. So Sam feels that he has to make up for those things.

Remmy: Yeah. We're feeding on both Sam and Cas' guilt in regards to Dean. I think it is just exactly as you say; Michael is not digging up Dean's true feelings. He's digging up what Dean knows about his people — his people being Sam and Jack and Cas.

Bea: Yeah. Michael can't be in their minds, but he can glean from Dean what he thinks their fears are, and then just push on them.

Remmy: Yeah, and it's just interesting, especially tying it back to Jack earlier. 

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: Putting it in that light, Dean would fear most that Jack doesn't feel like Dean really, genuinely cares for him no matter what Dean says or how Dean presents his feelings towards Jack.

Bea: Yeah, Dean worries he can't make up for what he was like upon their first meeting.

Remmy: Exactly. I'm not putting it into words correctly. You did a good job of it. It's not — all of this is not from Dean. It's definitely more Dean's fears for his people. 

Bea: It's tailored to his people because — okay, that pin that we stuck in Michael earlier? Where he was saying, "Well, Dean doesn't care about you, Jack, the way that he cares about Sam or Cas." And now the complete 180 on that when he's trying to talk to Sam and Cas, saying, "Oh, Dean doesn't actually care about you guys. Dean's desperate to get away from you, because you guys are just a burden. You're a responsibility, and because he wants to get away, that's why he said yes [to me]." It's the exact contrary subject that he was saying to Jack.

Remmy: Exactly. 

Bea: And that's just telling you right there. Either way, he was bulls***ting someone.

Remmy: Yeah. He's saying to Sam and Dean the same thing that he said to Jack and, while doing it, directly contradicting what he said to Jack. He says to Dean, "You don't need them. You don't even like them. They're responsibilities you desperately want away from. Look at this. Look at this bar. You want away from it all."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Which might have a tidbit of truth, but definitely no foundation on how Dean feels about his people.

Bea: No. Dean wants something for himself, yes, but that doesn't mean that he wants to give away everything else that he has. 

Remmy: Yeah. 

Bea: And yeah, so as he's saying all this s***, I think that Cas is like, "Okay, yeah. 2+2 — somehow he's coming up with 7? This don't make sense." And he realizes that Michael is stalling for some reason. 

Remmy: So Cas is the one who says, "You're stalling."

Bea: Yes, and when he says that, we cut back to Maggie and the other hunters entering the bunker, and they're barely ahead of the monsters that they're racing. They're trying to prepare to defend the bunker, and she tells this one hunter named Tiger to go up to the door and barricade that and — yeah. Jack is just like, "What's going on?"

Remmy: And Maggie's like, “Where's Sam? We need to get ready to action.” And she sees that Sam is out for the count. Deen is out for the count. Cas is out for the count. And Jack is just sitting there like, whoops. [laughs] 

Bea: Yeah, "I'm sorry. I'm all you got."

Remmy: And Maggie is just, "Okay. Okay, we can do this. Okay."

Bea: Yes. Yes, and then back into Dean's mental Rocky's Bar here, Sam realizes that Michael is waiting for the monster rescue to come. Those monsters that had left Kansas City, heading west? Well, that's what Michael is waiting on. And so Dean is trying to goad Michael into killing them, but he hasn't. Then they go, "Oh wait. So the reason why you're all talk is because your powers don't work in here."

Remmy: And we haven't talked overmuch about how this is the most Jensen-as-Michael we have gotten in the whole season, right?

Bea: Yeah. 

Remmy: This is a lot, and there was one moment here in the scene where, like you said, Dean is trying to goad Michael into proving that he's not as helpless as they are in this dream space.

Bea: Yeah. "You have no advantage in here."

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And Michael basically dismisses that, saying that he can destroy worlds and so he's just going to crush them with his bare hands. Dean, again, just goading: "Prove it."

Remmy: Yeah, and Dean says, "Prove it. Kill us all. If you're so powerful you can just nuke us now," and this is that Jensen-as-Michael moment. He flicks a look to Sam and Cas and he says, "Is that what you want?" Basically, calling back to, "You want them gone, right? You want to be free of your burdens—" your burdens being Sam and Cas and this life that you find yourself entrenched in, that you hate. But!

Bea: Well, I also took that as, like, if he's flicking a look to Sam and Cas, it's like, "Okay, do you guys agree?" Like, he's looking for dissent among the ranks, trying to get them to fight against each other.

Remmy: And that's another question that I'm like, was he trying to pick a fight by — Cas called him out on stalling for time. But did he want to pick a fight between Cas and Dean, and Sam and Dean?

Bea: Well, I think his intention was to sow dissent among the ranks. If they are in-fighting — "If I can create doubt between them" — then Dean might doubt the reason that they're here, [and] he might start doubting everything. "All I need is for them to not be a united front and I can twist my advantages."

Remmy: Yeah. Poorly worded when I said "pick a fight". I meant to pick a fight between the team, separate from him. Yeah, for sure.

Bea: And we actually get to see a fight with Michael on the offensive, for once.

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah!

Bea: For once, seeing Michael not just watching a fight come at him and letting the blows go by, and then picking the moment he goes in. Instead, we're actually seeing Michael strike out. He is tossing them around.

Remmy: He is — yeah, he is really the destroyer of worlds. He is killing it. Smooth criminal Michael, he — when he decides to go on the offensive, he is — he is putting the Winchesters to shame here, basically. And you said before, that it's so interesting how Michael fights because he never seems concerned. He doesn't have to be concerned. He's just waiting for his opportunity and then he's going to take it. He's always an absolute control and here he does have to be a bit more aggressive.

Bea: Well, I think at this point he's no longer trying to work towards some plan. He's like, "You know what, you little punks? F*** you. And you guys want to fight? You've been goading me? Well, here, you're going to get it." And he actually lets loose a bit on them.

Remmy: Yeah, and let loose he does. He has them — 

Bea: I mean, they've been questioning his power. He doesn't like to be questioned. He likes to be this absolute, hoity-toity thing and it's like, "Okay, so you guys are going to sit here and point out all my weaknesses? Well, I'm gonna be a little b**** and slap you around." [laughs] 

Remmy: [laughs] And he puts them all on their a**. They're all now on the back foot. 

Bea: Yeah, so that fight starts going.

Remmy: It's a great fight too.

Bea: Oh, I loved it. 

Remmy: Oh, yeah.

Bea: Again, chef kisses towards the stunt coordinator and the fight coordinator. 

Remmy: Yeah, they’re always hitting it out of the park. It's great. Yeah. 

Bea: Yeah. So that fight's ongoing, and then back in the bunker, the main door is rattling and it's like, "Okay, are we okay?" and then Tiger — our f******, our Chadley solo who headed out into the woods — his eyes flash green and [it] has Michael's grace a bit to it, and you're like, aw f***. This is an OP shapeshifter that Tiger got replaced [by] in the woods. 

Remmy: Oh my God, you're right! I didn't — oh my God. Okay. I was so confused. I was so very confused. I thought that Tiger was just infected.

Bea: Yeah, that he could have been a traitor since Kansas City.

Remmy: I didn't even know what to think. I thought it was some sort of cheap shot on ‘we have a sleeper cell agent’. But he was replaced by shifter. That makes so much more sense, because I was like, "Okay, so if it was just like scratched or bitten in the woods, then how would he have turned coat so swiftly? Or was he always a monster, or what's going on?"

Bea: I feel like it was the eyes. The way that they had the eyes flash green, it was to indicate it's not a vamp. It's not a wolf. It's a shifter.

Remmy: I was not — I did not catch that, but you're so right. Thank you. Thank you for solving that mystery for me, because I did not know what to think of it. [laughs] 

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: But yeah, so Tiger turns on Maggie and says, "Tiger shouldn't have gone in the woods," and, "You should have locked the door," because, before, we had Maggie instructing Tiger to make sure that the doors were barricaded, and... nope.

Bea: [laughs] Tiger was like, "I'm sure glad I was the one asked to do this directive," because he didn't lock the door and the monsters come pouring in.

Remmy: And one of the reasons why I didn't think shifter in this moment is because we've been talking — we've only name-dropped werewolves and vampires, right, so far? But here, on all of these baddies storming the bunker, we have monsters other than werewolves and vampires. We have one scaly thing. I don't know what it is. I don't...

Bea: I think that there was a rugaru in here.

Remmy: Oh, is that what the green thing was, or?

Bea: I was looking at the wiki for questions and it's like, there's a couple of OP monsters we haven't seen before.

Remmy: Yeah, so we have these monsters storming the bunker and it's not just werewolves and vampires. We see other flavors of monster here.

Bea: Yeah, there's a djinn in the list here. 

Remmy: Oh, yeah.

Bea: Because there was one tattooed figure who came storming down the stairs.

Remmy: Yeah, that's so — I like this a lot more, that Michael could put his... Well, so we had the djinn — Michael's djinn — in "Nightmare Logic", but in the last episode, Michael said, "Vampire, werewolf — it doesn't matter." But — we keep this 'monster umbrella', but we have been limiting ourselves on what that means so far.

Bea: Well, I think they've been really focusing on the ones that have an infection to spread. Like, a djinn can't really make people into djinn, and a shifter can't make people into shifters. They just can replace them. So these are things that they haven't really had an opportunity to shine in the plot.

Remmy: Perfect. Again, you answering my questions. Thank you, Bea.

Bea: I sit here and I'm like, "What would the director think?"

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah, that's so right. That's so right, because the whole Kansas City thing was Michael wanted to not kill everyone here. He wanted to spread his army. 

Bea: Yeah, he's playing a game of contagion.

Remmy: Exactly — [laughs] I love that game. I'm so good at it. And I always name my viruses after Genesis — no, after, uh. What are the first five books of the Bible called? Oh my God...

Bea: Um. [sucks in a breath] You're asking me religious things? I'm sorry, I...

Remmy: Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy...

Bea: I was like, Mikey and... Paul and... Steve...

Remmy: [laughs] Anyways. I always give my viruses biblical names. Anyways, we're... [laughs] 

Bea: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So the djinn, the vamps, the wolves, the rugaru, they come pouring down the stairs and they are killing hunters. They are kicking a**, and Jack is watching them lose. Maggie is sprawled out on the ground, and she looks so scared, and Jack just can't abide by standing guard any longer. He has to do something.

Remmy: Yeah. I mean, there is nothing he can do. He has no weapon. He has no — he's just sitting here, standing here, watching his friends die. And as we know Jack, we know that that is not something he abide by.

Bea: No.

Remmy: And he, with a shout and a blast of power — the first that we've seen this whole season — Jack is back, and he ashes out this entire room of monsters.

Bea: Yeah, five or six of them all at once just get dusted. And he staggers a bit afterwards, but he's still standing. 

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: So. Crisis kinda averted in the real world. Let's go back into Rocky's Bar.

Remmy: [laughs]

Bea: Sam, Dean, and Cas have triangulated themselves around Michael and he's just threatening that, "Okay, you know what? If you try and force me out, well you're all f****** meat juice on the floor. I'm going to wreck all of you."

Remmy: Well, he actually directs that to Dean. He's taunting them, saying, "Even if you were to force me out, I could rip you apart as I leave. I could leave you as nothing but meat and bones. I could take your conscious."

Bea: "You're as good as dead if I'm gone."

Remmy: Yeah, and we said before, Michael's kicking a**, but it is three-on-one and Michael does not have his super strength or super speed. He is just a fighter, and so we do have him cornered and he almost recognizes that. And then he starts trying to negotiate. 

Bea: Yeah, he's trying to change tactics.

Remmy: In the smuggest, most high-and-mighty way possible. There's no negotiation in his tone. He's just saying, matter of fact, "No matter what, I win." It's the same thing he's been saying: "If you force me out, Dean, I'll take you down with me."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: And Dean says, "Okay, can't force you out? Then I'll keep you here."

Bea: Well, he says, "Then we keep him in."

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, and he charges at Michael, and he slams him into the side of this door, the door to the freezer that we've been seeing. And Michael...

Bea: It's this group effort getting him in there, though. 

Remmy: Yeah, it is. 

Bea: That's the thing that I love. We've seen this whole time that Michael is trying to divide them. He's trying to turn Jack and Cas and Sam and Dean against one another, and in this moment, even when he's like, "If you force me out, I'm going to turn you [in]to pink spray on my way out," they're like, "Fine. We're just going to do something else." It goes back to his initial speech of saying, "Hope was all that you guys had." You had no chance of winning, but because of hope you drove yourself here. Here they are again, at the end, where he's trying to drain them of all hope and they're like, "You know what? We just thought of something else to do." And they work together and they achieve it.

Remmy: And you're so right, where Dean does say, "We don't kick him out. We keep him in." So it is that unity that you're talking about, and it's a group effort — that Dean distracts Michael to get him to this door, and then Michael might lay Dean out, but then that distraction is all that Sam needed to force him into the freezer.

Bea: Yep, and then Cas and them, they slam the door and grab the screwdriver. They force it into the walk-in cooler's handle to keep it from opening.

Remmy: And Dean says, "My mind, my rules. I got 'em. I am the Cage."

Bea: Yesss.

Remmy: [laughs] 

Bea: F***, that was good. 

Remmy: It was really good! It was really good.

Bea: Because yeah, we were sitting there, in this impossible situation — what do you do? — and to have the characters not give up hope, and to come up with this as the solution, I love it. I love when... They've been on their back foot this whole episode, but they haven't given up. And though they might fear for things that might turn out one way, or they have doubts, they still are proceeding with the intention of it working out.

Remmy: And it's such a twist, but such a satisfying twist to end on this — and we're not ending yet — but to end on this too. We've been thinking since the beginning of the season, what is Dean going to do about this Michael situation? This Michael possession. This trap that they've set and captured Michael in, within Dean's own mind, it's another question answered.

Bea: And I love that it doesn't feel cheap. It doesn't feel like a macguffin. It doesn't feel like a deus ex machina. It was something — like, Michael chose to put Dean in this construct, thinking that he had it won. But it was the fact that he made this construct and that Cas, Jack, and Sam had just enough power to withhold Michael long enough to pull his cards on him. Like, okay, show me your deck, and force Michael to come into the same level area as they were playing, and then they just beat him.

Remmy: This is super satisfying.

Bea: F*** yes. I love [that] we couldn't predict it at the end of episode 9, but by the end of episode 10, here, you're like, "F***. That was good."

Remmy: Yeah. Exactly. And we enter into the episode wrap-up, basically, at this point.

Bea: Yes. Yeah.

Remmy: Because we have Michael trapped and Michael is not happy about it. But Dean says, "I got him."

Bea: Yes, and he is just exuding confidence for the moment. 

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And then back in reality, we have Jack and Maggie and they're like, "Hoo boy, there is a mess to clean up here." Oh, I shouldn't say Jack. 

Remmy: [laughs] Sam. 

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Sam and Maggie, and Maggie is almost apologetic that they allowed the monsters to even reach the bunker. But Sam turns to her with such genuine pride and says, "Maggie, thank you."

Bea: Yeah. "Thank you for everything."

Remmy: She's looking at Maggie and almost — sorry, he is looking at Maggie and he seems to be seeing the leader that she's becoming. And oh. Oh, my heart.

Bea: Oh, I know. And yeah, she's being a bit dismissive and she's just saying, "Oh, no," like, Jack did all that angel stuff and that's why it worked out. 

Remmy: Yeah. She says, “It wasn't just me. It was Jack,” and then she — they both enter into this worried note. That's to say, Maggie says, "I didn't know Jack could still do that angel stuff," and Sam becoming a bit speculative. He says, "No, I didn't either."

Bea: "Yeah, that's a bit [of] news to me too." Because he knew — Jack brought it up earlier — but he thought that they had agreed on the note of ‘don't do it because Dean wouldn't want that.’ But...

Remmy: Yeah, it's just some worry.

Bea: Yeah, and we get to see it in a bit more detail in this next scene, because we have Cas scolding Jack in the kitchen, and saying that Jack needs his soul to stay alive. Like, he can't be burning it off, even if it is for what he perceives as a good cause.

Remmy: And Jack says, "It was an accident that I even did this, that this burst out of me," and Cas says, "You cannot afford these kinds of accidents," and he's so worried. He's trying to drill in [that] this is not just your life. This is your soul that we're talking about.

Bea: Yeah, and he says, "It's about you staying you." He's seen what it's like when people don't have their souls and he wouldn't wish that upon anyone, least of all Jack. And Jack did this because he didn't want them to be killed, but... So there's this middle ground that they're trying to reach, where Cas is just trying to be certain that Jack understands how severe this is and how he cannot do it again, and he does understand why Jack did it but it just can't happen.

Remmy: Yeah. Still understanding, but I really like the distinction that he's trying so hard to make here, that this is not life and death. This is your soul and this is you, your person. 

Bea: Yes, what makes up you.

Remmy: Yeah, we know what life and death is, but soullessness... To lose your soul, that's still almost the most terrifying thing.

Bea: It's an undeath, yeah.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, so.

Bea: But yeah, Jack promises and then Cas looks more — he looks content for it. He gets up and has a hand on [Jack's] shoulder, looking to try and impart with some physical — some body language — that we're okay, but poor Jack, he just doesn't look comforted.

Remmy: Well, we know how Jack is with his own perceived usefulness issues.

Bea: Yes. He's very like Dean in this, where if he has a failure or something that he perceives that he could have done better, then it just eats at him.

Remmy: And this is [groans] Yeah. Sorry, I am not projecting into the next — into the rest of the season — but we're setting us up for something to worry about, for the rest of the season. This opening episode, we're not only answering the questions that we left hanging in the cliffhanger of the last episode, but we're setting up the rest of the season with this one episode. This is a lot.

Bea: Yeah and like — pulling a Pamela here, but we don't even see what's coming for us.

Remmy: Michael trapped in Dean's mind, Michael's monsters, and now Jack and his soul, and knowing that he can burn his soul. He has the ability to burst out with this magic and burn his soul. Yeah. It's a lot, and there's — but there's more to come, because we have Dean in his room. He is standing at his sink in front of the mirror and he is struggling. He is hunched over the sink and hung before his mirror, I should say.

Bea: He's just chanting.

Remmy: Yes. Yes.

Bea: He has this mantra that he's telling himself: "It's just you. It's just you."

Remmy: He's reassuring himself. He's trying to reassure himself, and we're cutting into this mantra, like you're saying, with these cuts of Michael pounding against this freezer door. He is shouting. He is pounding. He is throwing things at the walls and the door and he is — we see that screwdriver in the lock just rattling, rattling. We see this door trying to give, and we get the impression that Dean is sitting here and is putting everything into keeping this door closed.

Bea: Yeah, that this hissy fit that Michael is throwing is really taxing him. But Dean is trying to find this calm center, despite the noise, to try and hone his focus and continue to fight and keep that door from rattling open.

Remmy: And he's trying to reassure himself, saying, "It's just you. Michael is locked away. It's just you here," but then the last thing he says is, "It's all you."

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: Which is a shift into it's all on you to keep him in.

Bea: Exactly. Exactly. It's no longer, "Oh, it's just me holding him back," or, "It's just me in here," but, "Now it's all on me to keep it this way."

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: And it's such a sad moment when you consider how it was a group effort to put Michael in there, and yet when push comes to shove, it does become this burden that is unduly focused — like, Dean has to be the one to hold it. 

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: [pause] But then Billie appears!

Remmy: [laughs] Oh my God.

Bea: And continuing this great tradition, she's doesn't have all good news to bring. [laughs] 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. What — oh my gosh. Billie appears behind Dean with her typical, "Hey, Dean," and Dean whoops around and he says, "Knock why don't you?" Very reminiscent of old angel Cas. But Billie — Death — does know all, and she says, "Would've figured that the pounding in your head is knock enough." and Bille. Bille, Bille, Bille. I love you. I love you. But bearer of bad news Bille, we haven't seen her for a while. We haven't. We haven't seen her since the Rowena thing. 

Bea: Yeah, "Funeralia".

Remmy: Yeah, but before that, Bille warned Dean — and she brings it up again now — she warned Dean that nothing good could come of traveling to, or meddling, in other worlds. And Dean says, "Getting Jack back, getting my mom back — Where I'm standing, it was worth it." And as he says it, he has to actually take a moment to collect himself because he is, again, fighting back that pounding in his head.

Bea: Yeah, he has that internal assault that he's dealing with.

Remmy: And Bille says, "Are you sure about that?"

Bea: Yeah. "Just look at you now."

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. And uhh, before — [laughs] before we get into the final little twist, Dean is wearing this green Henley, and I just — 

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: [laughs] I'm sorry. Three different times in this last scene, I have [in my notes] ‘green Henley, what the f***. What the f***.’

Bea: [laughs] I'm gonna have to rewatch.

Remmy: Those eyes are popping. Okay. But [laughs] what does Billie have to say? Tell me more.

Bea: Well, she's essentially here because in Death's reading room, the books that were dedicated towards all the potential ends for Dean have been rewritten, and there is now only one ending to all of them. It is essentially that Michael escapes and, using Dean, he destroys the world. "All of them, except one."

Remmy: Yeah. Dean asked, "All of them?" and Bille — God [laughs] I f****** love Death so much.

Bea: So good. 

Remmy: She says, "All of them, except one," and she hands over a single black notebook. She allows Dean to open it and read it, and in doing this — we didn't talk about it, but in this Dean-Death conversation, Dean brings up the fact that Death meddled. 

Bea: Yeah.

Remmy: In allowing Violet to to interfere. 

Bea: Yeah, and Bille contradicts and says, "I took a calculated risk."

Remmy: Yeah, and this is her taking another calculated risk. She shows Dean this notebook, this one ending that doesn't — presumably doesn't end in the death of the universe. Yeah.

Bea: The book, Death hands it over. Dean looks at it and he looks shooketh.

Remmy: [laughs] 

Bea: He's just, "What am I supposed to do with this?" and Death just goes, "That's up to you," and my last line here, yeah, "Dean is shooketh." 

Remmy: [laughs] Yeah. That's basically it. And you know what, this is — 

Bea: Jensen's face journey.

Remmy: I know, right? He reads the book, and we don't know what to think. We don't know what to think! We — again, talking about all of the speculation that came off of this episode, this is one of those moments where I know we had theories but I don't remember them. Or the fandom had theories but I don't remember them. What did we think was going to come out of this book?

Bea: Well, I know that we saw the preview that involved the creation of this box and/or the tossing of it into the ocean, and so we were like, he's going to f****** — he's going to martyr himself, basically, to remove the Michael problem.

Remmy: But there was so much more than that before we knew anything about the box. There was something. There were some big ideas out there before we knew anything about what was actually going to happen, and now I can't remember a single one. 

Bea: In the fandom, or? 

Remmy: Yeah, in the fandom.

Bea: Because I am — I know where I was trying to go with the box, but I'm like, the box is the next episode. So we got the preview right after this.

Remmy: Oh, is the box — You're right. The box is the next episode. F***. Okay. Okay.

Bea: But it was like, "What is going to happen with the box?" I feel like was the biggest speculation. Are they going to follow through with it? Is it going to have these repercussions that we don't know about?

Remmy: Yeah. I'm... I feel like there were some big ideas out there and I can't recall a single one so, listeners, if you remember what — if you want to link us some of the OG season 14, episode 10 meta, on the speculation on what was in this book, I'm super interested because I'm not recalling what was in there. I know that there was other world s***. There was some Death s***. There were some Cage It was all over the place and it was awesome. I loved it. Again, just one of those episodes that brought out so much speculation [and it] is always so much fun. 

Bea: Oh, I love it. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, and that's it. [laughs] That's the end, but you're gonna have to go first this time. What was your final takeaway, Bea?

Bea: [groans] Um. I...

Remmy: [laughs] You're going first because this is a hard one. [laughs] 

Bea: Yeah. I think I really am coming back to the way that Dean's dream — like, this bar — and the way that it is The Roadhouse to Sam's Bobby. 

Remmy: Yeah.

Bea: That they — if they had the opportunity for a moment of peace, for the hunting world to just calm down, I could see them having a future where Sam is at the Men of Letters bunker, but maybe Dean buys a bar in Lebanon and he spends his nights there and then comes home to [the bunker]. That they're still in each other's orbits, but they have a bit more space to be into their own interests and have their own things. I just really like that insight and the vision that that forms as being a potential way that the series could end. I mean, God willing and the creek don't rise, but...

Remmy: [laughs] Yes.

Bea: Yeah. Just all of what that bar represented for the future that Dean seems to be actually interested in, as opposed to the one that he thought he should have been interested in. Like, the suburbs with Lisa.

Remmy: Yeah and following that, we can think about what the future for Sam would look like as well, and it's so interesting to — oh my God. 

Bea: Yeah. Spirals.

Remmy: So much — [laughs] spirals and so much season 15 finale hopes and dreams. Hopes and dreams.

Bea: Yes. 

Remmy: I think that my final takeaway has to be Michael. Michael was phenomenal this episode. I loved the fight. You know, picking at the douchebaggery, but he was a great douchebag this episode, but most importantly my questions were answered this episode. When thinking on Michael's character, there was so much in me that was just one big question mark, and I didn't really connect with him as a character or his motivations. Or I was just waiting for the moment when we saw that crack. 

Bea: Yes.

Remmy: And saw the actual character of Michael, and this was that moment. We've had him presenting as Michael for so long, and in a sense that is him, but this was the episode was the moment when I really connected with him. 

Bea: Yeah, and you could appreciate him as a villain and the questions he raises about the nature of God.

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. It was a big payoff for me, personally, and what I wanted from the narrative and the road so far.

Bea: I'd agree. It was really satisfying to have — 

Remmy: It was very satisfying.

Bea: — the moment where he stopped being performative. He stopped doing the Dean thing and just putting on the face that he is trying to be, and he actually lets loose that, "We just wanted Dad to come back home and he didn't, and now I'm throwing a fit."

Remmy: It was so satisfying and it's — as a viewer, those big payoffs are... I don't want to say few and far between, but it's rare.

Bea: When they come, they shine.

Remmy: Yeah, when they come, they shine. It's rare that you're just completely happy with the way that something played out, especially when you weren't expecting it to play out that way. 

Bea: Yeah. Yockey did a really great job with this episode.

Remmy: He did. He did. And thank you Amanda Tapping — is that your name? 

Bea: [softly] Yes.

Remmy: Sorry. [laughs] Is it Amanda? Yeah — and thank you, Amanda Tapping.

Bea: So good. 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah, it was good. And it was — I can talk about what we expected versus what we got with the Kansas City Thanos snap thing, but overall — because we touched on it last episode, coming off of that mid-season finale, we really were thinking the big question was: How big are they going to go with this? 

Bea: Exactly.

Remmy: Did we just start the apocalypse? Did we just reveal the supernatural world? Did we just kill Kansas City?

Bea: Yeah! There was no telling what that snap would represent. But like we said last episode, the psychology in media at that time was, 'You're pulling from the Thanos snap.’ 

Remmy: Yeah. Yeah. This is big. This is life-changing. This is universe-changing.

Bea: Yeah, and so we're really left on that note of thinking that could be the way it goes. That's not how it played out, and I can understand why it didn't, but I'm like, oh man. Again, fanfiction could bring that a really interesting place, I would think.

Remmy: [laughs] This episode didn't go that big but it still did answer a lot of our questions in a very satisfying way, and tugged at the heartstrings with the Dean dream. So great.

Bea: Hell yeah.

Remmy: Nine out of ten. 

Bea: So good.

Remmy: Oh no, now I feel bad for not giving it [laughs] I could never rate these episodes because I would feel bad for docking points.

Bea: [laughs] 

Remmy: Anyways. That was season 14, episode 10, "Nihilism". Next week, we will be discussing season 14, episode 11, "Damaged Goods". Yeah.

Bea: Mhmm.

Remmy: So [laughs] So, welcome back, guys! Thank you for sticking with us for our marathon-length episode, but we had a lot of fun recording and we hope you had a lot of fun listening. And if you ever want to reach out to us, you should know how to do it, but Bea's gonna run it down for you anyways.

Bea: Yep, we have email — nochickflickpodcast@gmail.com. We have our website, nochickflickmoments.com or nochickflickpodcast.com, and we have our Tumblr, nochickflickpodcast, and our Twitter, nochickflickpod. So we got honeybunches of oats ways to reach out to us.

Remmy: [laughs] 

Bea: And we love hearing from you guys, so please do not hesitate. And yeah. So, we'll see you guys next week.

Remmy: Yeah, yeah. See you there. Love you, bye.

Bea: Bye!

Remmy: Bye!

[post-outro stinger]

Bea: F***. I'm looking through the App Store. I'm like, where's Plague, Inc.?

Remmy: [laughing]

Bea: So f****** good.


End file.
